February 1999

Looking back at Yugoslavia’s recent history from Tito to the calamity of the last years, Ignacio Ramonet concludes that it is right that Belgrade should reconsider its removal of Kosovo’s special status. What is needed is an agreement granting it the widest possible measure of autonomy within Serbia, that is to say within Yugoslavia. This means silencing the nationalist extremists of both sides.
The peoples of the Balkans continue to pay a heavy price for the short-sightedness shown by the (...)

The international community has watched with bated breath as the economic and financial meltdown spread from Southeast Asia to Japan, Russia and Latin America. What if China also succumbs and devalues its currency? Quite apart from the profound danger to the world economy, it would ignite an already explosive social situation within the country. The policy of export-led growth is reaching its limits, there are vast migrations of peasants turned floating workers and the authorities do not know what to do with the 30-50 million public sector workers who have lost their jobs.

China has been spared the international financial upheaval of the past year, but its economy is nonetheless showing signs of flagging since it is now reaching the limits of its policy of export-based growth. Rapid growth, coming from its four Special Economic Zones in particular, has made for an imbalance between regions - and within society. As a result, Beijing is changing its economic priorities.

China’s vast population made it adopt a harsh policy of single-child families. But with economic liberalisation and hopes that the birth rate will spontaneously decline as a result, there are tentative moves to give couples more choice in planning their families.

On 17 May the Israelis go to the polls. Until then the peace process will remain ever more deeply frozen, dashing the hopes raised at Oslo over five years ago. Those most excluded from this elusive search for peace are the Palestinian refugees. Driven from their homeland, they have lived in camps or towns near the borders of Israel since 1948. Many have languished in poverty, others have rebuilt their lives, but all have been affected by the pain of irreparable loss and all of them dream of “return”. For many long years the refugees spearheaded the re-birth of the Palestinian nation. Now, as the big losers in the Oslo accords, their tragedy strikes at the heart of the Middle East’s conflicts.

General Augusto Pinochet’s fate rests with the second ruling to be made by Britain’s law lords. Meanwhile, Chileans are passionately divided between those who long for the general’s extradition to Spain to be brought to book for his past crimes and those - notably his supporters - who see the “Pinochet affair” as an internal Chilean matter. One legacy from the past, slowly changing since the UN General Assembly’s adoption in 1989 of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, has been the country’s archaic and grossly deficient treatment of children in need and juvenile offenders.

The start of talks between the government of Andrés Pastrana and the two largest guerrilla movements, the National Liberation Army and the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, came as a relief to a society exhausted by Latin America’s longest war. But since the government has lost control over part of the country, we should not expect an early end to the conflict. If they are to sign a peace accord, the guerrillas want far-reaching economic and social reforms. Meanwhile the paramilitary groups hope to win a seat at the negotiating table by stepping up the killings.

After weeks of political crisis following financial scandals, a new Turkish government was formed in January which should pave the way for general elections this coming April. Yet, for all the vigour of its people and the dynamism of its economy, the country still remains under the shadow of the military. Moderate secular Turks find themselves unable to unlock the elusive door to true democratisation - not least because they share the generals’ fears of Kurdish separatism and Islamist ascendancy.

The countries of Central and Eastern Europe want to regain their rightful place in the mainstream of Europe. As a result, the leaders of the Fifteen and the Commission have been unable to imagine any arrangement other than indefinite enlargement of the Union and the straitjacket of the “acquis communautaire” (community patrimony). After ten years of painful reforms, the peoples of the candidate states are now being forced to accept ever greater sacrifices as the price of their new-found freedom.

Polish attitudes are dominated by a fatalistic conviction that unless Poland joins the European Union, things can only get worse. It was this conviction, rather than blissful expectation of a radiant future, that lay behind most Poles’ support for joining the EU. Given the experience of communism and the emotionally fraught “special relationship” with Russia, no-one any longer doubts that Poland must turn westwards. Despite this belief, the hope of uniting a continent divided for 50 years is gradually receding.

Thousands of women from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are being forced into prostitution in EU countries. The traffic began with the raising of the iron curtain and has spread rapidly in recent years due to growing economic hardship in the countries of the former Soviet bloc. Its hub is the Belgian city of Antwerp. The International Organisation for Migration has been concerned with the problem for some time. In December the European Commission in turn sounded the alarm, but so far the EU’s efforts have not amounted to much.

Policy for reconstructing Afghanistan lies in the hands of the United Nations, the European Union and the donor countries but they are making aid conditional on respect for human rights and particularly the rights of women, the main targets of the Taliban. The country has been devastated by the strategies of the major powers and the obstinacy of the “students of theology”, and now this kind of isolationist policy looks set to make it a scapegoat - a symbol of the West’s rejection of all Muslim societies. It is hard to see when and how Afghanistan will be able to escape the vicious circle in which it has been trapped.

The launch of the International Space Station’s first modules have put space back in the news. But the station is the result of “political engineering” and its scientific interest is debatable. Bringing in players like Russia, Japan and Europe, Washington is neutralising resources, not least those of France, that could have been put to better use. It is also insuring itself against any questioning of a project dear to America’s large aerospace firms and to members of Congress who benefit from their generosity.

In the end Romania’s 15,000 striking miners never reached Bucharest. A secret agreement was reached on a pay rise and the re-opening of pits closed just before Christmas 1998. In return the miners agreed to go back to their homes in the Jiu Valley. The compromise, negotiated by their charismatic and controversial leader Miron Cozma and Prime Minister Radu Vasile on 22 January, avoided a bloody showdown. But it is a fresh blow to the neo-liberal reforms President Emil Constantinescu had promised the IMF. This is not the first time that Romania’s miners have made their mark on the country’s politics - although they have still not managed to impose a real change of direction.

In town or in the bush, the African studio is the place where dreams come true. For a few pence, for one glorious moment, even the poorest can live out their fantasies in Philip Kwame Apagya’s studio, PK’s Normal Photo, in western Ghana. With a photo to show for it.